Alphabet's AI Heatwave Casts A Market Halo? Retail Now Crowns GOOGL The Top Long-Term Cloud Bet — Even Over Amazon

• Amazon's AWS remained the top cloud vendor in the third quarter, but its market share has been eroding, according to market research data.
• Google's cloud revenue grew faster than Amazon's AWS in the third quarter.
• Alphabet's stock is now the best-performing Magnificent Seven stock, having added 70% this year.

Alphabet's stock outperformance is rubbing off on retail traders' perception regarding the company's cloud computing credentials. Retail users of the Stocktwits platform voted Alphabet as the best cloud play in an ongoing poll that has received responses from over 10,000 users.

After underperforming its megacap peers for much of the year, the Google parent's stock has acquitted itself creditably. The stock began to take off vertically in early September, and since then, there has been no looking back. It is now the best-performing Magnificent Seven stock, having added 70% this year.

What Does The Poll Reveal?

We asked Stocktwits users, "Which cloud infrastructure stock offers the best long-term opportunity right now?"  And an overwhelming majority (44%) picked GOOGL as the winner.

Retail users have assessed the stock's potential based on their artificial intelligence (AI) prowess rather than their cloud infrastructure. This is evident in the poll results, which have relegated Amazon, the leader in cloud, and Oracle, which has made meaningful progress as a cloud infrastructure company, behind Alphabet. Only 29% viewed Amazon (AMZN) as the likely winner. Oracle (ORCL) and Microsoft (MSFT) were chosen by 14% and 13% of the users, respectively.

A user who backed Amazon said that, with the company's lead in robotics, drones, and AWS, it's an "easy bet that the company will outperform the others." Amazon investors, however, do not appear to be optimistic, as evidenced by the stock's mere 6% YTD gain. 

Some users also flagged Palantir as a name they are most bullish about.

Smaller Players Find Favor

Although the poll listed only the four prominent cloud vendors, comments on the poll's timeline showed some smaller names also struck a chord with the retail crowd. Quite a few users mentioned the name Nebius Group N.V. (NBIS), an AI infrastructure company, whose shares have surged by over 240% this year. Others that received a mention included micro-cap Hyperscale Data, Inc. (GPUS).

AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP vs. Oracle Cloud

Amazon's AWS remained the top cloud vendor in the third quarter, but its market share has been eroding, according to data from Synergy Research Group. According to the firm, worldwide cloud infrastructure service revenues, including IaaS, PaaS, and hosted private cloud services, were $106.9 billion in the third quarter, with trailing twelve-month revenues reaching $390 billion. AWS commanded a 29% share of the cloud market, compared to Microsoft's 20% and Google Cloud's 13%. 

Source: Synergy Research Group

"The chasing pack of cloud providers are all very substantially smaller, but the biggest story here is the gradual increase in market share of Oracle and the neoclouds," the firm said. Among the "neoclouds", Synergy singled out CoreWeave as the largest, with Crusoe, Nebius and Lambda trailing.

Google's cloud revenue grew faster than Amazon's AWS in the third quarter, suggesting retail's confidence may not be way off.

Alphabet Basking In Newfound' Halo' Effect

The Google parent now sits in the AI sweetspot. The company has been rapid with innovation, and the latest iteration of its Gemini large language model (LLM), Gemini 3, is seen as a potential threat to market leader ChatGPT. 

Alphabet is reportedly considering selling its in-house AI chips, the TPUs, for deployment in clients' data centers. The company has also benefited from a slew of positive headlines, including a less-than-severe antitrust ruling in September, the unveiling of a new quantum algorithm, and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway initiating a position in the company.

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.

Read Next: Micron's Meteoric Year Leaves Nvidia, Other AI Darlings Behind — But Retail Traders Aren't Buying The Hype Yet

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